Share this:

The British Prime Minister, David Cameron, is demanding answers as to why his intelligence services failed to prevent the horrific murder of Drummer Lee Rigby, 25, a machine-gunner in the 2nd Battalion, the Royal Regiment of Fusiliers, the other day at the hands of two jihadists in the streets during broad daylight, according to the Washington Times.

Intelligence had previously halted one of the suspects — Michael Adebolajo, 28, the one videotaped with bloody hands, waving a machete and knife — en route to Somalia, where it was suspected he was heading to fight with the terrorist group Al-Shabaab, The Telegraph said.

Six years ago, he was also arrested during a violent protest in Britain that was led by an extremist group. He also held membership in a group of militants who joined with known radical clerics to preach anti-Western messages in the streets of London, The Telegraph reported.

The other suspect, Michael Adebowale, 22, was a known extremist whose apartment was recently raided by police, The Telegraph said.

Cameron was also quick to call the attack what it was – a terrorist attack. Police also speculated whether or not it was part of a wider terrorist plot. Now compare that to similar attacks in the US over the past few years.

Carlos Bledsoe was a suspected terrorist before he shot two soldiers on recruiting duty in Little Rock, Arkansas. Even though he admitted that he was influenced by Anwar al-Awlaki, the radical imam, also known as the “bin Laden of the internet”, Bledsoe was never indicted on terrorist charges and the government won’t admit that there was a larger plot. A few months later, Nidal Hassan killed more than 13 unarmed soldiers at Fort Hood, Texas and that’s still classified as “workplace violence”.

Even though Bledsoe and Hassan were both targets of federal investigations at the time of their respective crimes, no one called for answers in any meaningful way. Then we get, as a reward for our complacency, the Boston Marathon bombing, also perpetrated by subjects of federal law enforcement investigations. Still no one is calling for the feds to answer tough questions about why they failed the American people. After all, doesn’t the Constitution call for the federal government to “provide for the common defense” – and not for all of that other bullshit that the government is wrapped up in these days, which ultimately detract from it’s ability to do what it’s supposed to be doing.

While David Cameron has the balls to call terrorism what it is, we get “There have been no large-scale attacks on the United States, and our homeland is more secure.” from the Preezy.
And, rather than make a war on terror, we’ll turn that effort into a criminal investigation? Lovely, just lovely.

The only way to solve a problem is to first correctly identify the elements of the problem, then fix each of those elements. That has not been done even though there are plenty of us around the country who know what the major components of the problem are.

Treating terrorism as a law enforcement issue and correctly identifying the elements of it could actually go a very long way toward eradicating terrorism. The problem with doing that, among others, is that you must correctly identify the elements of the crime just as you must do with any other problem.

Until this administration, or any other, is willing to call it what it is, look at the real world, and actually do things to solve the problem, neither calling this a law enforcement issue nor a global war on terror will result in a reduction of the attacks by those who wish to kill us all.

@OWB – Precisely. That’s part of what risk assessments are for. Had the Brits been more deliberate in investigating Adebolajo and his partner in crime when they first learned of his existence, common sense tells me both could have been deported and banned entry into England indefinitely. Perhaps only then would this have been prevented, and Lee Rigby would still be with us today.

Making the claim that helping victims of Hassan by labeling it terrorism would hurt the government’s prosecution of Hassan is such a load of bullsh1t as to be unbelievable.

Stop f$cking over the people injured and do the right thing. What’s so hard about that?

Apparently it’s difficult because the president doesn’t want to offend the good muslims, f$ck the good muslims, they are not doing jack sh1t to condemn these actions and they are not doing jack sh1t to stop these actions. If you are offended by the idea that radical muslims kill non-muslims based solely on a religious ideal then you are f#cking moron with no idea what’s going on in the country. Sometimes it’s not pretty to call a thing what it really is, but calling it something else only makes for obfuscation of reality.

OWB, you are correct in your assertion that identifying and labeling these elements is a good start. The only issue I have with treating it as law enforcement issue only is that there is no jurisdiction for LE beyond our borders. That means if we are going to eradicate it here we need to actually seal the borders, or we need to keep it a military exercise globally while coordinating a LE option internally.

My concern is that there is no longer any will to deal with this threat as a valid undeniable threat to our citizens and ultimately the nation. I prefer to treat the threat as an external matter and kill them where they live. But we don’t seem to understand how that works any more either. Thus I believe we are condemned through the weakness inherent in every level of our government and some of our top military officials to be unable to conduct a war that actually looks like a war designed to bring nations to their knees. We conduct wars like an occupying police action, that doesn’t stop the threat and it gets people killed with no change in the eventual outcome. Afghanistan will become another example of what a limited war accomplishes, which will be nothing long term. Afghanistan will look like it did in 2000 within 6 months of our departure despite our wishes and claims to the contrary.

I don’t know if anyone else here ever read 1984 but I’ve always found the ideas found within it instructive in understanding how the left operates. In the novel Orwell describes the concept of “crimethink” which Wiki defines as “… holding unspoken beliefs or doubts that oppose or question the ruling party”, which is fine except I would substitute “ideology” for “party” because the context of the novel has to do with a totalitarian Communist state and the modern left hasn’t achieved that (yet).

The point is, the prevailing ideology can’t accept that Muslims-an “oppressed minority”-are the problem. That would violate the left’s core concept of multiculturalism as an unqualified good-i.e. “crimethink”. Because this concept is so closely tied to the left’s worldview they will try to make what is actually happening in the world fit their expectation, which is why Ft. Hood has to be “workplace violence” completely unrelated to any larger cause and not “terrorism” inspired by radical Islam.

@7 I agree Hassan committed a terrorist act, plain and simple. The Administration doesn’t want to deal with the ugly, unpopular issues like terrorism on our homeland. So they use Political Speak and double talk. I say identify the problem, identify the perps involve and treat them through every LEA we have, as such, be they Muslims, white supremacist Timothy McVey types or whatever banner they carry. If there had even been a sniff of this out of say, Northern Idaho the feds would have been there a day early to get Ruby Ridge ready. But if you add Muslim to the equation then, well, we have to be sensitive to our peaceful majority of Muslins in the nation. Don’t want to tell the truth and call them out for what they are. We don’t have a peaceful majority of Muslims in this nation. We have a quite, except through the hate spewing Imams, America hating population growing here every day. Let’s start telling the truth and lay that truth at their doorstep where it belongs. Then start kicking in those doors!

Last time we appeased Muslims to not attack it, it did not stop them. We were paying them 20% of the budget for five years, but the Muslims didn’t stop. It finally took the U.S. Marines to beat the crap out of the Muslims to make them back off in 1805.

Since the thinking of the Muslims hasn’t changed in the the past five hundred years, perhaps we should revisit old strategies that seemed to work in the past, rather than revisiting old strategies that did not work in the past.

@9 You spoke better than I. We hit them in their homelands, hard. Then turn to America. Deny their immigration for any and every reason and seal the borders. They always poll the Muslims after these things happen and the answer is always the same. “We are peaceful Muslims trying to live in America.” The problem is the lie in that. Because in the screaming silence of their Mosques and their hearts, they hate us. They want an America run by Shahiah law, not democracy. Screw ‘em and get rid of them, whatever that takes. Violence it is said begets violence. No one lives by that more than Muslims. I saw answer their call to violence and give it to them until their are on their Muslim knees praying for Allah’s mercy from us.

“There have been no large-scale attacks on the United States, and our homeland is more secure.” Really? Then what in the hell were the Fort Hood massacre and the Boston Bombing? I wouldn’t exactly call 14 dead/32 wounded (Fort Hood) and 3 dead/260+ injured (Boston) “small-scale”. The only reason the Boston Bombing didn’t result in scores dead was because the terrorist bastards who did the deed built a poor bomb.

Must disagree, OWB. Trying to fight an enemy who has declared war by treating them as a “law enforcement problem” – which the Clinton administration did for at least 3+ years and arguably for all 8 years it ran things – was precisely what brought us 9/11.

@14. I believe you have swayed me. We can’t win wars with cops. We win wars with the military and we do it by targeting the problem and hitting hard. Full force. Stop negotiation with Iran and that ilk and give them a 24 hour ultimatum. Stop your shit or we stop you and you will never see a troop until we come in to mop anyone left.

Blackfive published an excerpt yesterday from a Pew report that said 81% of American Muslims agree, there is never a time to ‘kill the infidel’ innocent….then he pointed out, that means 19% agree that it IS appropriate, and that is drawn from probably the least radicalized general Muslim population in the world, in the US. So much for the “but most of us are peaceful” mantra. (Especially when you consider the world Muslim population, he cited, is over a billion. What’s that leave – at least 190 million hostiles?)

Hondo, my point was that neither a law enforcement approach nor a global approach will ever work when refusing to properly assess the problem. Never said that the law enforcement approach would work by itself, just that if properly used, it could actually help.

Like enforcing the borders. Some of us articulated on 9/12 that perhaps that would finally occur. Since it did not, the problem is exponentially worse now than it was then.

Someone remind me — after all the hub-bub about the great police response & all the Boston Strong publicity, did anyone in authority actually get around to declaring the Marathon bombing a terrorist incident?

Cameron would be better served by questioning his country’s Civilian Disarmament policies and procedures, as well as the blatantly apparent “bystanders do nothing to interfere with criminals” culture, also encouraged by his own government.

In short, there are very few British Pols who are not, by American standards, fucking asshole authoritarians.

Get On Board

Enter your email address below to receive updates each time we publish new content.

Privacy guaranteed. We never share your info.

About thisainthell

We are all military combat veterans and we write primarily from that perspective. Everyone who writes here has a Combat Infantry Badge, a Combat Medic Badge, a Combat Action Badge or a Combat Action Ribbon. We write about issues that matter to combat veterans..read more »